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Francis, Hywel: Were you still working in the barber's shop then?

Lewis, Richard: Still working in the barber's shop, the other educational influence of tremendous
importance to me, apart from the library in the town, was the fact that my uncle
who ran the barber's shop was a member of the ILP and the barber's shop really
was like a political centre. And it made a tremendous impact on me, the kind of
politics that the !-- W.E.A. -- ! represented because during the war years, a
large number of people from Briton Ferry went into the C.O. movement. And I
believe I don't know whether my figure is right, I've heard it said that ninety
people were in jail at one time. This may be an exaggeration, but a large number
of chaps from Briton Ferry went to jail and in the barber's shop of course, when
they were on the run, they would come there some times and have a haircut before
the shop opened. On one occasion for example, when a chap by the name of Tom
Thomas, Tommy Tupp'any he was known as in Briton Ferry, was on the run, his
brother came to my uncle and asked him if he could out his hair one morning,
say, about quarter to nine before the shop opened. And I remember my uncle
pulling the window of the barber's shop half way down, taking the tools off the
table and putting the table close to the window on a chair, so that if Sargeant
Williams came in, Tom could make a dash for it through the window. It didn't
come to that but that was the atmosphere. Then people used to come into Briton
Ferry to lecture and it was a common thing for the little boys then to go on a
Sunday night after the chapel was over to go then up to the Public Hall to
listen to the speeches. What they were listening to of course was the heckling
and the struggle that went on when men were shouting at each other and so on.
But the very best talent used to come there. The first political speaker I ever
heard, for example, was Keir Hardie. He came there, I think it was 1913. Then
when war was declared, or it could have been 1914 , just after war was declared.
Then when the war was on say a year or two years, then people used to drift in
and they went and stayed with people like George Gethin and Jo Branch who were
the local leaders of the Labour Party.

Lewis, Richard: The kind of people that used to come down, I was thinking of one man’s name,
Professor {Northcote}
from Liverpool University. He had lost his job there because of his attitude
towards the war. He came down and spent quite a long time with us, giving
lectures in the local Liberty Hall on the life of the bee taking us up the
mountain with Harry Davies, Cwm Afan, the Miners' leader, to study the local
geology, and as a little boy I used to go with them. Then we used to go into the
Crown Park in the afternoons, on Sunday afternoons, and listen to the local
speakers coming there. These men like Walter Newbould used to come down.

Francis, Hywel: These classes, these lectures, were they organised by the ILP or..?

Lewis, Richard: These classes were organised by the ILP, but it’s part of the atmosphere into
which adult education fits. By the time the extramural department in Swansea was
formed somewhere between 1920 and 1924, there was already a very large
educational influence at work in the form of this political influence. And it
wasn't just straight forward propaganda. Due to the accident of War all sorts of
highly educated people moved through the area. You know you would be listening
in the barber's shop when I was a boy, I’d be listening in the barber’s shop to
tremendous arguments over our attitude and the attitude of the Germans toward
North Africa, for example, when the British fleet or the German fleet threatened
to go to {Agadir}
wasn't it, in 1912. This type of thing was continually being fought over and as
a little boy I'd be listening to all this, and I suppose gathering something on
the way.